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[title]We all know that guy. Beanie-donned, draped in a checked shirt, tattooed pale arms gesticulating while he loudly proclaims the complex flavour profile of a rhubarb session IPA. The pretentious craft beer bro is an instantly recognisable stereotype – and one which reveals a darker truth about Britain’s craft beer scene that’s taken flight in recent decades.
In 2002, tax changes to small breweries led to an explosion of start-ups and micro-breweries popping up in storerooms and warehouses across the country. But despite the booming business, women and queer people are still conspicuous by their absence, meaning after two decades the industry still struggles to shake the trend of hetero male-dominated distilleries and taprooms. The Society of Independent Brewers Associations (SIBA) found in 2024 that only nine percent of craft brewers are women, though even that’s a healthy increase from a mere five percent last year.
But it wasn’t always this way. It was women who pioneered beer production in the Middle Ages, before the Industrial Revolution turned beer into a profit-making industry that shut them out. These days, the edgy branding and punk aesthetics of the craft beer community sits, for the most part, with the uninterrupted dominance of straight white blokes.
But diversity in craft beer can help budding talent rise to the top, and could even rejuvenate a struggling industry. Better beer making means better pints for everyone – so how do we make it happen?
Beer bro domination
Women have always been part of British beer’s story, but they face plenty of barriers when it comes to making and managing the stuff. Laura Emson, a national director at the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), explains ‘there are a lot of women working in breweries, but they tend not to be on the brewery floor.’ That’s backed up by the stats: women make up half of bar staff in brewery taprooms and 82 percent of admin staff in breweries, but they’re much more likely to be pouring the pints than making them.
Some folk reckon it has to do with the strenuous physical task of brewing, but Laura says breweries underestimate women’s abilities. ‘You are regularly hoicking 25 kilo sacks of grain around,’ she says. ‘But actually, I do that better than any of the men around me at beer festivals. And it is something that as many women are capable of as men, but there is a perception gap that it’s not for you.’
Craft brewing is also massively behind its sister industries when it comes to hiring: for example, the number of women wine-makers has ballooned in recent years. ‘Because the myth that craft beer is still the plucky underdog revolting against goliath ‘‘Big Beer’’ is still prevalent, there remains a sense that breweries engaged in such an honourable fight couldn’t possibly discriminate against employees, prospective employees, or drinkers,’ says founder of Queer Brewing and award-winning beer writer Lily Waite-Marsden. That said, the industry’s reputation for sexist workplaces can, understandably, put off women applying for roles, creating a vicious cycle of under-representation that’s tough to break.
Craft beer’s #MeToo
‘For my 30th birthday, I went to a beer bar in New York and I was dressed in this sparkly dress,’ says Charlotte Cook. ‘But whenever I went up to the bar to order, the barman would be kind of like, ‘‘oh, that’s really bitter. Oh, that one’s sour’’. [But] I know more about beer than everybody else in this room combined, and you’re judging me on the way that I’m currently dressed.’ This interaction captures the casual sexism that Cook, head brewer at Coalition Brewing in south London, often has to endure.
Sexism had been endemic in the entire industry
As one of the most established female figures in the industry, she’s also used her position to draw attention to sexism and harassment in the British beer scene. Allegations of discrimination, harassment and assault in the industry made headlines in 2021, dubbed ‘beer’s #MeToo moment’ as women’s experiences finally came to the surface. American brewer Brienne Allen’s Instagram posts asking women in the industry to share their experiences lit a tinderbox on both sides of the Atlantic.
Cook says her established position in the industry helped her share her story: ‘I could speak up without having to fear for my job or having to fear retaliation. I had experienced a lot of crap and there wasn’t really anywhere to go with that.’ She says that sexism, and other types of discrimination, had been ‘really, really endemic in the entire industry’.
After the initial media storm died down, Cook and others have been trying to keep the pressure up for real improvements for women workers. ‘In 2021, a lot happened,’ Cook says. ‘But I don’t think it’s had the long-lasting impact that needed to happen to really fix things.’ Some senior figures in beer accused of alleged inappropriate behaviour stepped down, but others, like BrewDog’s James Watt, have since popped back up again in other roles. ‘You can’t just go and sit on the naughty step,’ Cook says. ‘I don’t think it’s reached its final conclusion yet.’
Taking on ‘beer is for boys’
Cook isn’t the only one disappointed with the rate of progress. ‘I quickly grew frustrated with how much earnest head-nodding took place,’ says Lily Waite-Marsden. ‘I wanted to do something that felt like it could make a difference, so I started Queer Brewing.’
A small brewery in east London, since opening in 2019 Queer Brewing has become a driving force of diversity in the industry while raising tens of thousands for charity causes. Soon they will settle into a new production unit, opening this year.
‘Craft beer has such a one-dimensional image problem that it’s hard for people outside of that demographic to see themselves in this industry,’ says Waite-Marsden. ‘You see brewery taprooms owned by [straight] white guys largely patronised by [straight] white guys; when it becomes time to hire brewery staff, who do you think makes up the majority of the applications?’
She’s focused on making Queer Brewing a safe space for those who need it, and encourages others to take measures like formalising codes of conduct and making venues accessible to all, being ‘that queer and trans representation that we would have loved to see when we were younger’. Lily points to other organisations helping LGBTQ+ drinkers have a safe night out, like Pop Up Dyke Bar which hosts pub takeovers, and queer-owned security company SafeOnly.
Finding community
Someone who’s experienced casual sexism while working in beer is T, a non-binary bartender and craft aficionado at bottleshop Caps and Taps in north London. Things are getting better, they reckon, but they still have a hard time due to ‘people thinking that anyone that’s not a beardy man doesn’t know things about beer’. Groups like The Coven and Crafty Beer Girls have helped them find work between jobs, and are a network for sharing tips and staying safe. ‘We all give each other the heads up about bad employers and ones we wouldn’t necessarily go back to,’ they say.
There’s also Women on Tap: one of several new initiatives providing community for women passionate about a crisp pint and the science behind it. Rachel Auty founded the group in 2017, as someone who had ‘always been a really big fan of beer’ and was keen to meet more people like her. ‘Initially it started with a little local festival in the town where I live,’ she says. ‘I teamed up with this local pub and all the beers they put on were brewed by women or woman-owned breweries. And it just spiralled from there.’
Since then the group has hosted beer tastings, expert panels and events to spotlight women in beer, all funded by sponsorships from breweries. They’ve even teamed up with SIBA to launch the first ‘Diversity Champion of the Year’ trophy at the annual Independent Beer Awards.
Getting crafty
And what about helping more women get their foot in the brewery door in the first place? Women in Beer was formed by Amélie Tassin, a 20-year veteran of the beer industry who was looking for like-minded women to enjoy a pint with in Edinburgh. ‘Our first meet up started with four people,’ she says. ‘And now we have, like, 650 people in the group.’ In 2023, Women in Beer launched their mentoring programme, with 17 mentees so far.
People think anyone who’s not a beardy man doesn’t know anything about beer
One mentee on the programme building a career from her love of craft beer is Megan Swinn, Head of Sales at Mondo Brewing Company in Battersea, south London. Through the mentoring programme, Swinn has made a podcast interviewing other women working in beer sales and marketing. ‘It’s definitely up for the breweries to work hard all year round to make sure that women feel they can join the industry, and when they do join the industry they’re comfortable there,’ she says.
Brewing change
These conversations are coming at a tough time for the industry. Breweries are struggling to recover from the double-hit of Brexit and Covid, and now the problems are bubbling over with dozens going bust. Even punters may have had their taste for whimsically branded sours satiated, with the industry in a steady decline since its hazy hey-deys of the 2010s.
Campaigners say the industry’s dire straits prove that including women isn’t just a ‘nice’ thing to do – it’s essential to reach out to untapped consumers and keep pints flowing for everyone. As CAMRA’s Laura Emson puts it, ‘If you are deliberately excluding 50 percent of your market, you’re a bloody stupid business person’. For their own survival, she thinks, brewers and marketers need to shrug the outdated association of craft with bearded machismo, and start actively reaching out to female consumers to keep the industry alive.
She cites the case of Elsie Mo, a golden ale produced by Castle Rock Brewery whose pump logo featured a titillating pin-up girl on a WWII aircraft. ‘They changed the branding from the woman as a sex object on the side of the plane to piloting the plane, telling the story of those women who flew behind enemy lines to get planes where they needed to be after they’d been bombed or shot down,’ she says. ‘That wasn’t being tokenistic. That’s how you do it.’
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